CAKE!?

I promised it was coming. Here it is! My first CrafTay! attempt at cooking!

I really am not much of a kitchen chemist. I am not good at guessing amounts, I have semi-unsteady hands, making very accurate measuring impossible, and a lack of patience for all things involving cooking food in general. However, I think I just struck gold when I attempted this recipe. I will not promise that I could do this again, but I will be willing to try for special occasions. Or you can make your own...

I love the internet. I love it for lots of reasons, but one is the mass database of recipes on thousands of websites. Now weeding through the 45,000,000,000 results for "carrot cake recipe" is another story. So I turned to my favorite Food Network Celeb, Alton Brown and used his recipe for Carrot Cake found here.


I gathered the necessary ingredients. There are LOTS in this cake and icing. Hopefully your stash of cooking supplies is not as depleted as mine was and you had to go get all the spices and other baking goods. Oh well. I have an extensive supply of baking powder now so I guess I better move on and keep cooking.


The recipe calls for 6 medium carrots, I used 4 and ended up with a little more than a cup and a half finely shredded.


Mixing.


The recipe also says use a food processor. I only have a blender and my Kitchenaid. So Whisk attachment it was!


I went nutty and added some walnuts. I think it was a good move.


Whew! I poured the finished mixture into two 9" cake pans.


Bake.

While the cake was baking, I cleaned (Imagine that!) and made the icing.


I left the creme cheese out while I made the cake so it would be softened by the time I was ready for it. I substituted the butter for Crisco. Because there is nothing better for you than dairy and lard in one spoonful! (Actually, a while back in my icing adventures, I had used Crisco in an icing instead of butter and it was great.)


Lots of confectioners sugar and there you have it! Creme Cheese Icing!

Prep for decorating! I love to decorate cakes!


The final product! My icing was thin-ish. I should have added more sugar. Overall reviews were good flavor wise, but it was a little dry. I will attempt this again soon. I am pretty pleased with my first attempt at carrot cake!